Category: Daily Reflection

“Thou shalt not steal.” (Exodus 20:15)

Recently I went into a Target store near my home to make a quick purchase. As I headed to the back of it where the item I needed was located, the store manager suddenly appeared from some back room and briskly walked by me shouting loudly into a phone she cradled tightly. She was communicating with the local police, describing a shoplifter who supposedly was a repeat offender attempting to steal again right then in her store. As I listened to her describe what this person was wearing and what he had just hidden in his clothing, that being two new video games, I suddenly saw the guy she had described walking towards me. For a moment our eyes locked just as he caught wind of her conversation. It was then she saw him as well and he realized the graveness of his situation. He abruptly discarded the games and immediately sprinted out the store. What happened after that I have no idea, but it definitely brought back many memories of my own days of thievery.

There was a time in my life long ago during my alcohol and drug days, where I actually was a kleptomaniac myself. I stole a ton of things that ranged from cigarettes to candy to music to alcohol and more. It became a game in of itself where I got a rush each time I got away with my petty life of crime. I used to tell myself every time I did it that no one was getting hurt by my actions. I further rationalized it by saying the stuff I was taking was overpriced and took a Robin Hood stance surrounding it, even though I was always stealing whatever it was for myself.

The first time I got caught was at a Rite Aid I worked at. Beyond the many small things I stole almost every day from there, I also had been taking coupons from the sale flyers and putting them in the register, as if a customer had used them, when they hadn’t. I’d pocket the cash value of those coupons and then buy something in the store with it. I had done it so much that the store’s profit margins were greatly being affected, but I hadn’t even realized that until I got accused of it one day by the manager. I played innocent and then quit on the spot, blaming them for it being such an unhealthy place to work at. Yes, I was that spiritually sick! Later that summer, karma finally caught up with me when I got caught attempting to steal two musical albums, ones I’m almost embarrassed to say now! The feelings I had inside at that moment were no different than the look that shoplifter gave me when our eyes locked in Target that day.

Guilt, shame, conviction, you name it, I felt it in that moment when those security guards took me arm in arm back into the store. My little game of thievery was up and the result, a court case that ended in a misdemeanor that thankfully got expunged by doing 40 hours of community service. For a guy who came from a life of privilege, it was such a huge ego deflation and most certainly one of the first spiritual wake-up calls I had in my life and one that probably protected me from ever entering into an even bigger life of crime.

I’ve worked hard to make restitution for all those I harmed from that part of my life over the years and am thankful getting caught back then made me never want to steal again. It probably was the first Commandment I truly learned to respect in my life and definitely wasn’t the last.

God, I thank You for helping me to understand the spiritual sickness of stealing long ago and that I continue to fully embrace one of the Ten Commandments even to this day. 

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

“Thankfully, we have a God who does not quit being God when the situation is bad.” (Daniel Brown)

I have two small ornamental ponds in my front gardens. Two or so feet wide by maybe four feet long, they merely are for decoration with a bubbling fountain in each’s center. For as little as they are and for having nothing in them but the fountain, they require a lot of maintenance, which includes skimming them daily from the day they’re opened, usually around Memorial Day, to the day they’re closed, usually the day after Halloween.

So, as I stood there the other day skimming the leaves and debris out of them for what felt like the umpteenth time this year, I watched a cricket swim around, totally unable to get out. Quite typically I find a half dozen of them dead in it on any given day late in the summer and through the early fall. Lately, this has me wondering why they continue to jump into the water over and over again when they see their fellow crickets already in there dead or desperately trying to get out but unable to do so.

The more I pondered this as I skimmed my ponds, the more I realized this is a lot life my life. How many times have I jumped into some pond I couldn’t get out of on my own? Countless. All those “beautiful bubbling waters” I’ve often dived into throughout my life where each have led to numerous mishaps, missteps, and some almost to the brink of my death.

Jobs, relationships, addictions, and more where each began with me staring transfixed into some bubbly fountain of perfection I believed they had, that the answer to all my life’s problems was somewhere within their depths. Only to discover me struggling to get out of their grasp eventually, clinging to some wet side of their murky walls that had now become my prison, until I was forced to cry out for help to escape.

While these crickets have me on most mornings saving most of them from sure death by skimming them out of there, many still never make it. Thankfully, I can’t say that of myself when it comes to all my pleas for help. Because God most assuredly has saved me time and time and time again, day after day after day after day, from one alluring pond after another that I’ve quickly jumped into, thinking that happiness was somewhere within its depths, when it never was probably from the start.

I’m just glad I can say that God has been there for me repeatedly to skim me out of places I never should have been swimming around in the first place.

Dear God, I know I’ve repeatedly jumped into one pond after another that I was never meant to jump into in the first place and have often been unable to get out of on my own. Thank you for always being there for me to skim me out of each of them and thank you for knowing you’ll be there again for me when I most assuredly will probably fall into yet another at some point in my flawed humanness of life. 

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

“Hell is just a state of mind, a radical separation from God.” (Marq de Villers, author of ”Hell and Damnation”)

Does Hell exist? This is a question I’ve often pondered in my life, ever since my United Methodist upbringing that introduced to me this fire and brimstone type of place that all terrible sinners end up going to. Many Christians have argued its existence throughout the centuries based upon how they interpret scripture, while many Theologians have profusely debated the very same scriptures and believed it’s something that human beings themselves created the existence of.

Take Theologian Micah J. Stephens, author of “Hell Is Not For Real: Re-Examining What the Scriptures Actually Say About Eternal Torment”. In his book, he writes, “The word hell in the Bible is a very poor translation of the original Hebrew and Greek words that speak of the resting place of the dead (Sheol and Hades) and a literal valley on the south side of Jerusalem (Gehenna) that became symbolic for the judgment via an invading army. We see Jesus in the Gospels speaking of Gehenna while in or around Jerusalem, not long before Rome sacked and destroyed the city in AD 70. Eternal torment of the soul in the afterlife is not a concept that is found in scripture.” On the other hand, take Brian Jones, Christian author of “Hell Is Real (But I Hate To Admit It)”.  In his book, he interprets scripture totally different and adamantly states, “The fact of the matter is: Hell is real. Deciding or not hell exists isn’t an intellectual exercise, it’s a matter of eternal life or death.”

The majority of Christians I’ve met over the years have said they’d rather not risk the chance of hell existing, even if it possibly doesn’t exist. They worry about the damnnation of their soul and because of it, they tend to live out their lives in total fear of committing some cardinal sin that may send their soul to that fire and brimstone type of place once they die.  And boy, do I know what it feels like to live in that type of fear, oh, so, very, well.

Because of modern day interpretations of the Bible stating homosexuality is a sin (even though the word homosexuality didn’t even exist back in Biblical times), I’ve frequently been told in my life by Christians that I’m either absolutely going to Hell or am risking the possibility of going there once I die because I’m in a gay relationship. Telling me this has never done anything more than leave me in this terrible fear-based cycle of a punishing God who cruelly created me with only an attraction to the same-sex that I’m not even allowed to be with, instead to spend my life in total celibacy, loneliness, or fake heterosexuality.

None of that logic has ever worked for me and I truly mean none of it. It’s never felt right within my own soul. The idea that God made me in his own image, but somehow screwed up in my sexuality, and then is going to send me to some fire and brimstone type of place if I continue to engage in the sexuality he created me with, with a same-sex person I absolutely love just makes no sense.

That’s why I have more of an inclination to believe in what Marq de Villers states in his book, “Hell and Damnation”. In it, he says, “Hell is a state of mind, a radical separation from God.” That computes a lot more with me because living with chronic pain, or formerly in far too many addictions, or all the times I’ve suffered from severe anxiety or depression, feels exactly like being radically separated from God. When you live with a condition that makes your muscles feel like they are burning and on fire for days on end, for years and years, you too might feel that Hell is nothing more than the state of your own pain-based mind.

So, do I believe hell exists? While I may be stoned metaphorically for saying this, what if Hell is right here on Earth, based upon our mindsets? And what if all of us are actually accepted home with God after we die, NO MATTER WHAT TYPE OF SINS WE LIVED IN?

This concept of living out a fear-based existence due to the conception that all chronic sinners go to a fire and brimstone type of place once they die, especially when my sexuality will probably always be thought of as a sin to many Christians, is not indicative of the unconditionally loving God I’ve come to love and worship. Choosing to believe that God picks and chooses who comes home is creation of Hell itself, which is why I choose to believe otherwise, that God loves me just as I am, gay and all.

Dear God, help me to always look to You as an unconditionally loving and accepting Father, who created me just as I am, who will welcome me home in your arms when I die, no matter what.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson